I got the pertussis vaccine this morning. California is experiencing an epidemic of pertussis, its worst in 55 years, with 4,223 cases as of September 21….and 9 deaths, all infants too young to be vaccinated. The state Department of Public Health is recommending that anyone who expects to spend time around infants get a booster shot. If you can’t get pertussis yourself, then you can’t pass it on to your children (or the kids you’re babysitting, etc.).
Category: Life
Ape Tomatoes
LA Music Center at Night (Photo) & The Glass Menagerie
On Saturday we went the the Mark Taper Forum to see The Glass Menagerie. It seemed an appropriate night for a “little silver slipper of a moon” (next to the Bank of America tower).
It was a great production, and one that really made use of the idea of it being a “memory play.” Most of the productions I’ve seen (including the one I did in high school) tend to switch between past and present as if they were two distinct experiences. This one mixed them together freely.
(Interesting thought: I’ve probably been to the Ahmanson Theater a dozen times or more, and I’ve seen three shows at the Mark Taper Forum…but I’ve never been inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the Walt Disney Concert Hall.)
Least Imaginative Graffiti Ever
Yes, that’s right. Someone scratched the word “GROUT” into the grout between tiles in this movie theater restroom.
Crowds at the Street Fair
I’ve finally found something more crowded than Comic-Con International: The Orange Street Fair on a Saturday night.
I think we usually end up going on Sunday, because while it’s usually a solid crowd, I don’t remember feeling quite so…herded. We ended up not doing much more than getting dinner and dessert.
Still, the baklava on Greek Street was good, as were the “Australian” potatoes (that probably weren’t any more Australian than the ice cream), and one of the lemonade stands was offering diet lemonade sweetened with Stevia, which meant Katie could actually drink it.
Overheard
“Do you want a Viking helmet?” “F%@# yeah, I do!”
“Is your name Don?” “Uh, no.” “I wonder what it would have meant if your name was Don.”
“These cupcakes are insufficiently sized.”
“Do you even know where you’re going?” “Yeah, that way.”
Drink Your Cupcake
The Straight Dope experiments with Kahlua cupcakes to determine two questions:
- How much alcohol is left in each cupcake? (Not much)
- Can you get drunk? (Not unless you eat so many cupcakes that you’ll be sick anyway.)
Curious Cloud Caps
A couple of days ago I clicked on the StumbleUpon toolbar and landed on this incredible photo of lenticular clouds over Mt. Rainer at APOD. It was a bit unnerving, because that picture has been my desktop wallpaper for the past year or so! Good call, though.